New HP CEO Ready To Mount Software Offensive

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New Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker Friday left little doubt that he will use his 20 years of experience at German software giant SAP to push the world's largest IT company deeper into the software market.

In his first conference call with Wall Street analysts since being named to the post 16 hours earlier, Apotheker said he believes that HP should be more "valuable than the sum of its parts" and "software is sort of the glue to make that happen. Software [allows us to] differentiate on our industry standard platform. Software can make sure that various parts of our technology actually fit well together." He also pointed to "higher-value-added services" as an "increasingly important element and component of the strategy as well."

"HP is grounded in the hardware business," said Apoktheker, who stepped aside as CEO of SAP in February after less than a year in the wake of an SAP revenue slide. "There are few companies, if any on the planet, that could even come close to HP's capability when it comes to hardware. I bring to the stable an asset that HP is less grounded in, even though it is a great company in that business as well, that is software and to a certain extent high-added-value services. I plan to bring that personal value to HP."

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